Mitch Glover, 14, of Leamington Spa, was visiting the Neuville-St Vaast German war cemetery in northern France on a school field trip when he photographed what he believes may be a ghostly resident.

His class was there as part of a lesson on poetry of The Great War. The cemetery is in Arras, once the scene of bloodshed and combat in WWI.

Neuville-St Vaast: The largest German cemetery in France has 44,833 buried there.

Many believe that a violent or tragic death often leaves some essential part of a person–a soul, life-force, whatever-you-want-to-call-it–lingering in the world of the living: a ghost, spirit, or specter. Many people claim to have had an encounters or sightings of things that seems otherworldly. A poll conducted in 2013 by The Huffington Post concluded that 45% of Americans believe in ghosts.

This is the photograph that Mitch Glover took while visiting the cemetery. Can you spot the specter?

It wasn’t until returning home and looking at his phone’s photos that Mitch noticed the creepy image.

The ghost in the picture held by Mitch seems to be wearing the uniform of the Seaforth Highlander regiment. 12 known highlanders are buried nearby.

The question of whether or not ghosts exist is complicated by the fact that fraudsters, scam artists, and people looking to make a quick buck have often exploited the belief in the supernatural by creating elaborate faked images, clever photoshopping, or staged “sightings.” A quick look across the internet generates thousands of such schemes. A healthy dose of skepticism goes a long way when dealing with ghost stories.

Here is a close-up of the image in Mitch’s photograph. We had one of our engineers closely examine and his conclusion is that the image is likely NOT photoshopped.

In our analysis, the compression levels in the image shows consistency that indicates it’s an intact original.

Had this been photoshopped, you would have seen a white area where the ghost image is.

The other issue, which we demonstrate by including the photograph below, is that of confirmation bias.

This WW1 era photograph shows some survivors of the Seaforth Highlanders.

If you decide that the image in the photograph resembles a man wearing a kilt and a tam-o-shanter (the hat seen on the soldiers in the photo) standing at parade rest, the tendency is to ignore evidence that disproves it and search for evidence that confirms what you already believe. This is one of the pitfalls of scientific research.

But what of those things you’ve seen with your own eyes? The woman who appears at the foot of the stairs? The old man who asks you for a light and disappears? The hitchhiker who gets in and then…doesn’t get out? Tricks of the mind? Hallucinations? Or something…more?

There are millions of things that we cannot and will not ever be able to grasp with our senses: things that lie beyond the reach of human consciousness. These range from colors that we cannot see to things that we cannot even know that we do not know. While skepticism is important, it is also important to keep an open mind and realize that there is an entire, vast universe out there that is, quite simply, beyond our grasp.

Whether or not you believe in ghosts, Mitch’s photograph is pretty compelling. What do you think? Please share this article with your friends: skeptics and otherwise!

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